Mr. Robot is as close to a biography about my early 20′s as you can get:

Security Contractor by day: check

Vigilante hacker by night: check (I hacked an insurance database for 27 universities in 2006 and almost went to federal prison for it, among other things).

Addicted to Morphine/Opiates, but thinks that he can manage it: check

Sleeps with his drug dealer who turns into his girlfriend: check

Suffers from social anxiety and depression: check

you forgot one:

Christian Slater invades my life as either a real person hell bent on driving me further into a mental break down hellscape or a Tyler Durden-esque mental image but honestly cannot be sure which: check

So, in apropos of nothing, I had this really random thought. I’ve played a lot of video games set in the apocalypse. In a lot of these games, you walk around the world scavenging for supplies. You find food, water, ammo, etc. You also find junk. The Fallout universe is pretty great at this. It’s really believable stuff, well placed. You’ll find a burned downed house with a teddy bear cradled by a small, blackened skeleton. You’ll be raiding a hospital for medical supplies and loot “medical clipboards” as junk under broken gurneys. You’ll find discarded and crumbled cigarette packs.

You know what you never see? A fucking coat hanger.

That’s seriously weird to me. What happened to all the coat hangers? I mean, right now, pre-nuclear apocalypse, I’m low on hangers in my closet, but most of them are metal and I think they’d survive nuclear fallout better than my clothes would. On top of that, you know how you’re either using every hanger in your house or you feel like every unused hanger in the world is sitting in your coat closet? There’s no happy middle to that. All or nothing on coat hangers.

Where’d they all go in the apocalypse? Lets say I survive the nuclear apocalypse, I’ve set up a nice little compound to keep myself safe. I’m well stocked on necessities, maybe even have a collection of unburned books for entertainment. My clothes are getting dirty and I want to use all the clean water for drinking, not cleaning obviously, so I raided a mall for clean(-ish) clothes. Bring it back to the compound. Now I can’t hang any of it? That’s bullshit.

Coat hangers are the apocalypse version of socks in the laundry. They just go missing and you can’t explain it.

It’s time to update the listing for my current PC build’s parts. Some of this will be a copy/paste from my last list, but I’m clarifying a few things.

Well, for anyone thinking of diving into the PC gaming world, or those that have been out of it, here’s my current build. I’m linking to NewEgg because it’s easier, but I actually got a few of the parts through BestBuy because it’s cheaper (ignoring my employee discounts, too). A couple of the parts are “adjustable” because I wanted to go one way when others might want to go another. I’ll put notes in for each part as to why I did it instead of another option.

Case: Corsair 650D - $190 - I had originally wanted to do a NZXT Phantom, because it’s awesome looking, then decided on a Corsair 600T White Edition, but landed on the 650D. It has amazing build quality, excessively easy to build and work in, and is actually really nice looking while lacking gaudy bright LED fans.

PSU: Corsair HX650 - $120 - I like modular PSU’s, and the HX is nearly fully modular, the only part that’s not is the 20/24+4/8 pins, which you have to plug in anyways. I thought of going bigger than 650W, but I usually use a single video card in the $300 price point, so I really don’t need it. I could run a pretty serious overclock of my CPU with one video card and be fine, or a moderate overclock of CPU with SLI’d GTX (something)60’s and be fine. I do neither, so all the better.

Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-V - $190 - The Z77 chipset is the de-facto Ivy Bridge chipset, supporting everything you want when paired with one. Feature for feature, ASUS packs in an incredible amount of stuff versus their competition, and few can beat, let alone match, their customer service and RMA process. I considered going up to the P8Z77-V Pro, but the extra onboard headers it provides (1 extra USB3.0, TPM, COM port) aren’t worth the price jump, I think.

CPU: Intel i5-3570K - $220 - I considered doing a 3770K, but the HyperThreading will provide little extra performance in gaming. Although I do FRAPS games and edit the videos, I don’t do it enough or use the higher end video editing features to warrant it. That said, I can always upgrade to it down the road. I only have done a smaller overclock of the 3570K, having the unlocked part is worth it.

RAM: Corsair Vengeance Low Profile 2x4GB (8GB) DDR3 1600 - $45 - I did low profile RAM because it gives me room for larger CPU coolers if I need/want it, and I’ve been running 8GB’s of RAM for a couple of years now and can’t remotely see needing more unless I buy a DSLR and shoot in RAW. I just don’t use all 8GB. Getting factory overclocked RAM is nice, but even this non-overclocked RAM didn’t show up right to the motherboard because it tried to run it at 1333MHz. Also, the minor speed jumps in RAM speeds don’t produce enough of a performance increase, I believe.

CPU Cooler: Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus - $30 - Under full load, with a small overclock, and the case’s fans set to automatic, my CPU barely brushes up against 50C. This cooler is insanely good for air cooling, and so cheap you can’t argue against it for this kind of rig. I actually bought a new one, but I ran one on my last system, too. If you plan on a big overclock, Corsair’s H80 or H100 are seriously nice, prefabbed water cooling systems. Reliable enough, but if you move your PC around too much it’s difficult to trust any water cooling.

Video Card: EVGA GTX660Ti FTW - $300 - For the money, huge bang for the buck. The 600 Series Kepler chips from nVidia run cool, use very little power, and push out amazing performance. Top notch, can’t argue with it. EVGA has a great RMA process, a lot like ASUS, but EVGA’s Precision X tool blows everything out of the water. It gives you tons of feedback even if you don’t overclock, and if you do it makes it stupid simple.

OS Storage: Samsung 830 Series 256GB SSD - $190 - The only reason I’m running a 256GB SSD is I had the chance to get a freebie for Christmas this past year for my old system. I had planned to do a smaller, 64GB SSD paired with a Western Digital Black series hard drive and use Intel’s new SRT feature. SRT allows the motherboard to make a “Hybrid Drive.” It caches the most accessed files on the SSD, basically. The 830 is a killer SSD, though. Rock solid and stupid fast. If you’re going to do a single SSD, it’s hard to live with less than a 256GB. You can swing a 120-128GB, but Windows 7 is 20GB’s on it’s own, and most games are no smaller than 5GB. The Witcher 2 and Tera are 25GB’s each, ARMA 2 Combined Operations (required for DayZ) is about 17GB’s. You need the space.

Mass Storage: Seagate 1TB SATA3 - $85 - I have a Western Digital 2TB NAS I use for “mass storage” of videos, music, etc. I really use this just for FRAPS'ing. FRAPS on this rig makes freaking huge files, and it’s more than fast enough to write it all at speed. Most people would probably use this for what I use my NAS for.

Optical Drive: LG SATA DVD/CD burner - $18 - Something simple. I considered doing a Blu-Ray drive but a writer is still pretty expensive and really, I mean, who cares? You just need it to install the OS and anything else. You COULD skip it entirely if you wanted and install from USB flash drives, but it’s a pain setting that crap up.

Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM - $100 - I actually use Ultimate because I got it for silly cheap from a Microsoft training program when I worked at Best Buy, but I was running Home Premium before that. Ultimate isn’t necessary for pretty much anyone, Home Premium is fine. I still recommend against Windows 8 just because most even slightly older games have not been updated for Windows 8, and although it does some cool stuff it’s just not mature enough yet.

When I originally wrote this up in the summer, this build was about $1500. Now it’s down to just shy of $1400. That’s accounting for price drops, as well as swapping out the video card for a much, much newer one. That said, you can still save a bit by replacing some of the parts I used for a smarter build, in my opinion. For instance, you can pick up a 1TB hard drive and 64GB SSD and probably save at least $100. Performance wouldn’t be worlds apart, and frankly it might be more reliable.

When it comes down to it, these my general rules of thumb for pricing individual parts, and things to consider when pricing them:

Spend about the same amount on your CPU and Video Card. I usually shoot for $300-ish on either. That’s the sweet spot for price/performance. If a card that’s usually $300 is on sale to $250, great. If a better card is on sale down to $325, that’s cool, too. Intel usually does one revision during a life cycle. Meaning, the i5-3570K I have is the first version of Ivy Bridge. We’ll probably see one more before the CPU’s that replace Ivy Bridge. My 3570K will go down in price, and something else that’s a higher clock speed or more cache (probably both) will replace it at a price point. If Sandy Bridge is an indicator of what they’ll do with Ivy Bridge parts, ignore the revision.

Don’t ever skimp on the motherboard and PSU. Get quality parts when you can. They’re the parts that are most likely to bite a bullet, specifically if you’re pushing your system. There are a lot of quality names out there, so do research. Personally I’m a huge fan of ASUS for the motherboard, but the PSU I’m not terribly picky about as long as it’s a reputable brand. A lot of PSU’s that come from companies like EVGA are rebranded parts, which isn’t always a bad thing but worth investigating.

Even if you’re going to stick a PC under the desk and out of sight, you need to consider the case. How easy is it to build in? What’s the airflow like? Will you need to buy fans for it or replace the ones it comes with? If it says USB3.0 support, how does it do it? A header or pass through cables (the latter is annoying, and what my Corsair 650D does)? Again, personally, I hate cases with lots of lights. The only complaint with my Corsair 650D is the Power Button and HD Activity lights are INSANELY bright white LEDs, but they are actually tasteful and nice looking. Too bright for me, though, so I covered them up with electrical tape. Think about that stuff ahead of time.

The idea of buying parts of a new build over the span of a few months instead of doing it all at once is not a good one. You spend too much of that time waiting for the next great technology. It’s OK to put off buying one or two parts if your system can handle the upgrade when they do come out, but buying a CPU and motherboard at different times is a bad idea, you want to get the memory and cooler for it at the same time, too, and why not get the rest at once? If you’re doing it because you have trouble saving up, maybe you dip into the fund too frequently, and think you can manage your money better by spending it in bits over time, you should use this as a test of your will power. Figure out what you’re looking for spec wise, figure out the basic price, save up, and readjust any specs or prices when you’ve saved up. If you can’t do that, sign up for a store credit card or two from retailers that sell parts, buy what you need and pay it off as fast as you can. You’ll be happier, I promise.

Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in a film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.

Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale or the evenings too long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.
Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, god dammit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent of a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, goddamnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.
Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so goddamned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life of which I spoke at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being told. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. Or, perhaps, stay and save my life.

So, Cliffy B is leaving Epic Games. If you don’t understand that, I don’t care, it’s time for me to go on a conspiracy theory bend.

So, in the last couple of years, any time that the CEO of a company and the company both make independent announcements of the CEO’s departure, it’s for stupid reasons. At HP, it’s because the guy was using company money to pay for an affair he was having. At Best Buy, it’s because the guy was using company money to pay for an affair, but in some sort of “worse than HP” way.

I’m not going to sit here and try to tell you that I don’t love “Call Me Maybe.” Because I do. Aside from being the feel-good hit of the summer (and spring… and for me, on into the fall) I think there’s a good bit of sadness in this song. That longing is the angle from which I approached this cover. Ta da!

I don’t even care if you’re sick of this song, it’s Jenny Owen Youngs and I love her and you can shut the fuck up.

I don’t like this.Loki is the usper, Thor is the rightful heir to the throne. They need to be flipped around.How the hell is Nick Fury a Greyjoy?The rest are “OK I guess” except Stark. I understand putting Ironman as a Stark is kind of obvious, but frankly Tony as a Lannister makes a bit more sense. The colors, the money, and the fact that he’s basically Tyrion but not a dwarf.

So, Cliffy B got a hard on for PC gaming again, after lamenting it a couple years ago because Gears of War sold better than Unreal Tournament 3. Fortnite, the first Unreal Engine 4 product, will be PC Exclusive. He apparently even went as far as saying you can get a next-gen console now, and it’s a gaming PC.

Well, for anyone thinking of diving into the PC gaming world, or those that have been out of it, here’s my current build. I’m linking to NewEgg because it’s easier, but I actually got a few of the parts through BestBuy because it’s cheaper (ignoring my employee discounts, too). A couple of the parts are carry overs from my last system, and a couple are “adjustable” because I wanted to go one way when others might want to go another. I’ll put notes in for each part, saying if it’s a carry over, or why I did it instead of another option.

Case: Corsair 650D - $180 - I had originally wanted to do a NZXT Phantom, because it’s awesome looking, then decided on a Corsair 600T White Edition, but landed on the 650D. It has amazing build quality, excessively easy to build and work in, and is actually really nice looking while lacking gaudy bright LED fans.

PSU: Corsair HX650 - $125 - I like modular PSU’s, and the HX is nearly fully modular, the only part that’s not is the 20/24+4/8 pins, which you have to plug in anyways. I thought of going bigger than 650W, but I usually use a single video card in the $300 price point, so I really don’t need it. I could run a pretty serious overclock of my CPU with one video card and be fine, or a moderate overclock of CPU with SLI’d GTX (something)60’s and be fine. I do neither, so all the better.

Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-V - $180 - The Z77 chipset is the de-facto Ivy Bridge chipset, supporting everything you want when paired with one. Feature for feature, ASUS packs in an incredible amount of stuff versus their competition, and few can match, let alone beat, their customer service and RMA process. I considered going up to the P8Z77-V Pro, but the extra onboard headers it provides (1 extra USB3.0, TPM, COM port) aren’t worth the price jump, I think.

CPU:Intel i5-3570K - $230 - I considered doing a 3770K, but the HyperThreading will provide little extra performance in gaming. Although I do FRAPS games and edit the videos, I don’t do it enough or use the higher end video editing features to warrant it. That said, I can always upgrade to it down the road. I only have done a smaller overclock of the 3570K, having the unlocked part is worth it.

RAM: Corsair Vengeance Low Profile 2x4GB (8GB) DDR3 1600 - $55 - I did low profile RAM because it gives me room for larger CPU coolers if I need/want it, and I’ve been running 8GB’s of RAM for a couple of years now and can’t remotely see needing more unless I buy a DSLR and shoot in RAW. I just don’t use all 8GB. Getting factory overclocked RAM is nice, but even this non-overclocked RAM didn’t show up right to the motherboard because it tried to run it at 1333MHz. Also, the minor speed jumps in RAM speeds don’t produce enough of a performance increase, I believe.

CPU Cooler: Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus - $30 - Under full load, with a small overclock, and the case’s fans set to automatic, my CPU barely brushes up against 50C. This cooler is insanely good for air cooling, and so cheap you can’t argue against it for this kind of rig. I actually bought a new one, but I ran one on my last system, too. If you plan on a big overclock, Corsair’s H80 or H100 are seriously nice, prefabbed water cooling systems. Reliable enough, but if you move your PC around too much it’s difficult to trust any water cooling.

Video: EVGA GTX460 1GB - $125 - I carried this over from my last build because I’m still waiting on the nVidia GTX660/GTX660Ti cards. It’s basically the only bottleneck I have left in my system, and I run pretty much every game on higher settings with no problems. I can’t sustain higher FPS on all of them, but most of the demanding games stick in the 35-40fps range, while many stay at frame rate caps (60fps). I’m linking to a refurb because there aren’t any other versions available for it. I’ve considered jumping over to an AMD 7850 or 7870, but can’t talk myself into it.

Storage: Samsung 830 Series 256GB SSD - $300 - The only reason I’m running a 256GB SSD is I had the chance to get a freebie for Christmas this past year for my old system. I had planned to do a smaller, 64GB SSD paired with a Western Digital Black series hard drive and use Intel’s new SRT feature. SRT allows the motherboard to make a “Hybrid Drive.” It caches the most accessed files on the SSD, basically. The 830 is a killer SSD, though. Rock solid and stupid fast. If you’re going to do a single SSD, it’s hard to live with less than a 256GB. You can swing a 120-128GB, but Windows 7 is 20GB’s on it’s own, and most games are no smaller than 5GB. The Witcher 2 and Tera are 25GB’s each, ARMA 2 Combined Operations (required for DayZ) is about 17GB’s. You need the space.

Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate - $290 - I’m running Ultimate only because I got it from Microsoft for dirt cheap through their retail employee training program. If I hadn’t gotten it for nearly free I’d be running Home Premium, Ultimate has no features worth the price jump for a gaming rig. Doing an OEM version is worth it for the savings, but make sure you get 64-Bit.

The prices I listed are what NewEgg is currently listing them at, making my current build a $1500 Rig. I actually spent more like $1250, I think, but that’s because some of the parts I got cheaper else where. You can also replace some of the parts I used for a smarter build, in my opinion. For instance, you can pick up a 1TB hard drive and 64GB SSD for about $200 instead of $300 for a fat SSD. Performance wouldn’t be worlds apart, and frankly it might be more reliable.

When it comes down to it, these my general rules of thumb for pricing individual parts, and things to consider when pricing them:

Spend about the same amount on your CPU and Video Card. I usually shoot for $300-ish on either. That’s the sweet spot for price/performance. If a card that’s usually $300 is on sale to $250, great. If a better card is on sale down to $325, that’s cool, too. Intel usually does one revision during a life cycle. Meaning, the i5-3570K I have is the first version of Ivy Bridge. We’ll probably see one more before the CPU’s that replace Ivy Bridge. My 3570K will go down in price, and something else that’s a higher clock speed or more cache (probably both) will replace it at a price point. If Sandy Bridge is an indicator of what they’ll do with Ivy Bridge parts, ignore the revision.

Don’t ever skimp on the motherboard and PSU. Get quality parts when you can. They’re the parts that are most likely to bite a bullet, specifically if you’re pushing your system. There are a lot of quality names out there, so do research. Personally I’m a huge fan of ASUS for the motherboard, but the PSU I’m not terribly picky about as long as it’s a reputable brand. A lot of PSU’s that come from companies like EVGA are rebranded parts, which isn’t always a bad thing but worth investigating.

Even if you’re going to stick a PC under the desk and out of sight, you need to consider it. How easy is it to build in? What’s the airflow like? Will you need to buy fans for it or replace the ones it comes with? If it says USB3.0 support, how does it do it? A header or pass through cables (the latter is annoying)? Again, personally, I hate cases with lots of lights. The only complaint with my Corsair 650D is the Power Button and HD Activity lights are INSANELY bright white LEDs, but they are actually tasteful and nice looking. Too bright for me, though, so I covered them up with electrical tape. Think about that stuff ahead of time.

The idea of buying parts of a new build over the span of a few months instead of doing it all at once is not a good one. You spend too much of that time waiting for the next great technology. It’s OK to put off buying one or two parts if your system can handle the upgrade when they do come out, but buying a CPU and motherboard at different times is a bad idea, you want to get the memory and cooler for it at the same time, too, and why not get the rest at once? If you’re doing it because you have trouble saving up, maybe you dip into the fund too frequently, and think you can manage your money better by spending it in bits over time, you should use this as a test of your will power. Figure out what you’re looking for spec wise, figure out the basic price, save up, and readjust any specs or prices when you’ve saved up. If you can’t do that, sign up for a store credit card or two from retailers that sell parts, buy what you need and pay it off as fast as you can. You’ll be happier, I promise.

I’ll try to do more posts like this in the future, maybe about how to build a system for those that haven’t or haven’t in a while, key software to have on any Windows desktop (specifically a gaming rig), and other finer points, like why having a second monitor is incredibly helpful while gaming and also totally boss.

I try to play way to many games at once. I have a level 45 Lancer in Tera I’m ignoring, still haven’t done my first Masters in Tiger Woods 13, even with 120+ hours in Skyrim I haven’t actually finished the main story, I can’t fathom deciding who to follow out of Flotsam in The Witcher 2, and I downloaded the Counter Strike Global Offensive beta only to remember I don’t care for CS. All I’ve done the last week or two is ATTEMPT to find a DayZ (ArmA2 mod) that works well enough to play on, or steam roll over faces in Super Monday Night Combat as the OP gunner.

The reason I say this is, as I sat down at my computer after getting off of work, I thought, “What am I gonna play? Ain’t nothing to do, I guess…” What an asshole.

So here’s the idea: A split screen view of two different people, both of them alone in their little split screen rooms. They’re both feeling a little sick and decide to pop a couple dayquil or whatever. They both swallow wrong and start choking. They both pull out smart phones, one’s 4G the other is 3G. The 4G guy finds directions on how to self-Heimlich and laughs in the face of death. The 3G guy is dead. Smash cut to carrier logo.

Google Plus has been, so far, quite a triumph for Google. It’s gotten a fair bit of media attention, there’s a visible clamor for invites on other social networks, and, most importantly, it’s a great product. A lot of people are still trying to it figure out. Google included, I imagine. What’s perfect as is? What’s lacking? And where? how are the masses going to use it? There are a number of features that the current batch of Google Plus beta testers have talked about in depth, but a few I feel have been ignored. Chiefly, Sparks.To understand what I want from Sparks, I think I need to clarify a bit of my personal history with online news consumption in the last couple of years. I was a Digg user for some time, but stopped using it not long after version 4 was released. Originally, for my purposes, Digg was just a news aggregator. Other users posted news, other users voted on if it was good or not, and it’d end up on the front page where I’d read it. I voted, too, but rarely in the Upcoming sections. I could go to digg.com at 2pm, see one batch of news, and come back at 6pm and see all new stuff that had been shared since. Digg 4 took it all in a more “social” direction, focusing too heavily on some abstract community. Also, they tried to cater to news outlets by including some archaic system for users to follow Cracked or The Wall Street Journal, but it was some sort fo all or nothing game. The way I was using Digg was virtually impossible now. So, I went to reddit. Reddit is built from the ground up for it’s community, but community references itself ad nauseum. Although I’m still using it, it falls far short of how I want to consume my news, but does hit a few key points.My ideal system is that I follow certain key interests I have. Video games, MMO’s, Formula 1, sports cars, world news, national politics, books, movies, television, etc. Users submit stories from around the internet to these topics, and other users vote it up or down based on how “good” the story is. Very reddit “subreddit” inspired, I know. The difference to me is that I’d don’t ever want to see comments, user names, anything that identifies the user that submits it, the users voting on it, anything. Just a headline, a blurp, and the score it’s gotten. I just want the bits and pieces from around the web. For instance, I don’t care about what some guy says about what a girl did after she heard about what her mom said the president was going to do. I care about what the president is going to do, and MAYBE what someone’s reaction is if it’s poignant (or funny). To me, if you’re opinion on the matter is valuable to the internet, then you should take the time and write something in depth. People will submit it and vote it up if it’s good. If it’s not, then shut the hell up.Now, to get back to Google Plus. Sparks has been, at least from my point of view, widely ignored. I see SO MUCH potential for Sparks to fill this void in “just the news.” As Sparks works right now, I search for the topic I want to see a Spark about, Formula 1 for instance, and hit “Add Interest.” Now I have a nice little news feed of F1 news. The current problem is there aren’t enough news sources parsed, which can be fixed easily enough for the automated side of things. However, half of the point of Google Plus has been the +1 button. There’s a voting system already built into the thing, why aren’t they using it in Sparks? They could easily hit on every point I’m looking for with some (I imagine) subtle changes. Have the Sparks pull in more news sources, probably using Google News’ as a starting bed. Then allow user submitted material. As the system sees certain sites being submitted regularly, it gets parsed if it wasn’t already. Users can then vote for all the news with +1’s. Each Spark has two tabs, Top News and Upcoming. Freshly submitted pieces go in upcoming, and things that are getting a lot of +1’s or shares goes in top. You could even create another one of those annoying “share it!” buttons for webpages to include, a “Spark it” button. The user can go to a Cheezburger network site, hit Spark it, pick the Spark for it to go it, and they submit and +1 it at the same time.I see a lot of potential in Google Plus as a whole. I can treat it like a Twitter/Facebook cross over, potentially dropping a service or two in time. If Sparks grows and develops in the right ways, I can replace a lot of news sources I hit multiple times a day, too. I don’t remember the last time I was actually excited to see where one of these projects goes, there’s so much potential and I think everyone knows it.

So on Tuesday night I got bored and was dicking around in the settings for my Seagate NAS. It has a DLNA feature I thought I turned on but seemed to never work because I never saw anything showing up where it should. I’m stumbling thru settings until I find a button “Sort Media.” “Oh, I see. I guess the drive needs to parse my data, find file extensions, and build a database of the locations of the files. Of course, that makes perfect sense.” So I hit the button. Half an hour later I’m trying to play a song and it’s throwing errors about not being in the known location. Sure enough, it’s not. Turns out all of the 17,000-ish songs aren’t where they belong. Where are they? Why, the folder My Music, which I found out early on you can’t even delete. Now I know why.

Upon further inspection I find that every video, audio, and image file has been moved to My Videos, My Pictures, and My Music. Not neatly, either. They were all dumped into the folders haphazardly, seeming to only rely on metadata for organization. I’ve spent years saying, “no no no, a proper file and directory structure is more important than 100% accurate metadata. I’ll keep good ID3 tags in the music, but why waste the time on photos?” Well, that fucking backfired in my face. I’m still at a loss for who in their right mind relies ENTIRELY on metadata for organizing. It’s putting all your faith in whatever manages your metadata (iTunes, for example) to be your one and only method of using the files. I’m sure that’s possible for some people, and I know with an Apple lifestyle choice it’s probably not hard assuming you also keep good backups, but it’s ridiculous none the less.

After a night of stewing in an angry, red mist directed at Seagate, I started formulating a plan of recovery. I, being the lazy shit I am, refuse to do this one by one. I needed to find an automated method for the brunt of the work. I was debating using a long series of Linux tools, which would also require a ton of hand coded scripting. Or, I could make life a bit easier with a few tools and a wise methodology for my attack if I go with two Windows apps. One is for the ID3 tags themselves, and the other is to automate the creation of a better file tree structure.

I already know of and have used one of my tools, MusicBrainz Picard. It’s a smart ID3 tagger based on an international database, MusicBrainz. I used it about a year ago to try fixing up a large portion of my collection’s tags which were out of order. It either auto-fills or auto-corrects missing tag data. When I used it originally it messed up a hand full of my albums, but it also corrected a lot more. I relied too much on it’s automation last time, which is what caused most of the problems I had. This time I’ll be more involved.

The other tool is MediaMonkey. Although I could do this with EasyTag on Windows or Linux, MediaMonkey is far more widely used and well documented, so I’ve been able to find some scripts to help further automation of the tagging, as well as it’s ability to parse the library to find things that require editing. Easier automation is my goal this time around, and it makes more sense.

The plan is pretty straight forward:

1. Clear out anything that is obviously not where it’s supposed to be. Since Seagate’s little automated data-fucker task moved every last audio file on my NAS into the same folder, there’s not just a lot of misplaced music, but also a lot of random crap from years ago I’ve been meaning to delete but never get around to. I need to move these else where for now. This was done by hand, just reordering the file listings until I knew what was an wasn’t from an album directory and moving them in large enough chunks to scrub folders.

2. Separate the easy albums from the hard ones. Quite a lot of the music is well tagged since my last go around with MusicBrainz, so most of it should be able to be cleaned up very quickly. MediaMonkey did this with it’s Auto-Organize Files tool, but it took me a while to plan it out right so that when I hit go it wouldn’t make a bigger mess, but also get as much as possible in the right places. So I spent a lot of time going thru the entire library it made to make sure album artist tags were right. Right before I was ready a nice Tornado Watch/Warning was thrown up, too. Had to hold on hitting OK for a while, because if it started and crashed part of the way thru it’d be even harder to start it over. Once it was done I breezed thru it once more to clear out some oddities that shouldn’t have happened, like 2pac and 2Pac folders being made and track numbering not leading with 0 on single digits.

3. Get ALL the easy stuff out of the way first. With all the easy fix albums organized into a nice file structure, I moved any fragments left over to another garbage/scrub folder. I’m currently going thru what’s here (lost somewhere between 500 to 1000 tracks) and trying to clean up further inconsistencies in the tagging. Making sure disc numbers are set right, proper years and genres, etc, etc. Going to throw MusicBrainz at what’s here again, to see if I try and spend more time on it instead of letting it’s do it’s thing how much better the tagging will be.

4. Redownload what I have to. If some of the hard stuff is simply bad tagging I can get around with an hour or so of work, no big deal. But I already know a lot of it is going to be complex figuring out what album it came from out of an entire discography, or why this Weezer album has Orbital tags (thanks MusicBrainz/assholes all naming their album “Blue Album”). So, if there isn’t too much of it, I’ll just spend an hour or so making a list of what I need to re-obtain.

I already cleaned up my videos. They were pretty easy considering anything besides movies or tv shows I have could be deleted because I forget they even existed. What scares me is the My Pictures folders. There are thousands of pictures, many of which have incredibly cryptic file names like IMG0002.jpg or DSC14003.JPG. All the pictures from all the cameras I’ve had, as well as archives of wallpapers, screenshots, and other crap. Not including the image files from old web sites and designs I’ve done. All of it dumped in one folder, which zero metadata. I have nothing to go on by file sizes and modification dates if I want to automate any of it. There’s a good chance I won’t ever touch it. It’ll be my elephant grave yard, a reminder to not trust anything that lacks documentation.

All in all this is a clusterfuck Seagate’s put me in. I put in the following support ticket:

I recently hit the “sort media” button on one of my shares by accident. The NAS proceeded to take my roughly 17,000 track MP3 collection, that was organized quite neatly into folders dictated by artist name and album name, and put each individual track into one “My Music” folder. The folders I had created are now simply empty. Anything resembling organization is gone.

Please, for the love of whatever invisible man in the sky you pray to, tell me that I don’t have to spend some ungodly number of hours reorganizing these files one by one? I see in my future filtering thru a thousand albums trying to place each track in the correct folder. I seriously doubt it, but is there anything resembling a undo button for this action, or a data log of the file moves so I can at least write a script or something to reverse it?

and received this reply:

Thank you for contacting Seagate.

I am sorry that you are having an issue with your Seagate product. I understand that you selected the media sort option and then moved the files into that share. Unfortunately the only solution to this would be to recopy the data after updating the firmware.

The latest firmware revision removes the sort media option box. I am sorry to say this but you will have to manually arrange the files back to their original structure.

Below is a link with information on how to upgrade the firmware on your Nas.

<cutting out a link and a further Thank You>

The reason I can never recommend a single Seagate product ever again is simply that I can’t believe how bad this situation is. There is no explanation of what the sort button does, the help files on the NAS don’t even reference that the button is there. The feature is apparently so bad that they removed it from the latest firmware. That means I’m not alone in this problem. The logic of what it did is non-existent. It’s simply DUMB. Every time anyone asks me, “Western Digital or Seagate?” I’ll say something along the lines of, “I can go on if you want, but the short of it: Seagate and I have badblood between us.”

Today I rung a guy out for an iPad 2. Afterward, his friend tried to hand me a couple pages that looked torn out from a book. He asked me if I was a believer, and I realized what he was doing. I handed it back to him, saying simply, “Hey man, it’s cool. I’m an atheist. You might want to hold these for someone else?” and handed it back. He started questioning me about it, trying to get me to listen to whatever … stuff he was talking about. I had to drop the, “I don’t want to get in an argument with a customer about this stuff, so… yeah.” and continued to just nod at him for a bit. He left, but the whole thing’s been on my mind since.

What I WANTED to do was drop something simple: I’ve spent a very long portion of my life as a nonbeliever. I’ve discussed it with my Catholic parents, I’ve talked to priests, reverends, imams, rabbis, and others, including family and friends. I’ve spent at least 10 years, more like 12 or 13, considering myself an atheist, and longer then that just not knowing what to call it. What could one random stranger POSSIBLY say that would suddenly change my mind? If he honestly thinks he could, that is a level of self pride that clearly falls in the seven deadly sins definition of pride, which is kind of ironic to me.

So, anyways, if you ever think atheists seem depressed and you think it’s because they don’t have God in their lives, realize it has more to do with having to put up with crap like this all the time.

In short: Google for “Vanessa Hudgens naked” and you’ll be happier with what you see. Synder basically wrote a bunch of fun scenes and attempted to connect them, and failed miserably.

In detail (attempting to avoid spoilers): The movie’s based around one very cute girl losing her shit. She develops an intensely surreal fantasy world(s) in order to cope. The individual fantasy scenes are neat, beautiful, and interesting. The (not so) subtle connections between them, both the connections to the real world that’s developed and the fantasy in between each, are poorly contrived. Foreshadowing is too obvious, the twist is nearly impossible to not see coming, and the story arch is broken. Synder took a lot of archetypes and smashed them together. If I were 14 I’d hate myself for saying any of this, because it’s got Nazi zombies, guns, hot chicks, swords, dragons, robots, bombs, etc, and that OBVIOUSLY makes it an Oscar worthy movie.

If they were able to lock a few higher profile (better) actors, which would be hard because no one worth it would agree to what it is, it might of been more enjoyable. If Synder developed a few story boards and gave it to someone to write, it would have been a lot better. However, all he did was prove “I can make movies based on comics that are fucking awesome, but I can’t write for shit.” I really think getting a higher profile secondary writer in, besides this guy that hasn’t done anything (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0793122/), would have done this movie a world of credit in the direction of not sucking.

With AT&T buying T-Mobile, there are three national carriers left in the USA. Sprint’s the odd man out now. As a current Sprint user, I think they need to do 3 things in order to stay competitive:

1. Switch from WiMax to LTE yesterday. They need to get themselves onto the same data network as the other providers. Verizon learned from the mistake that is CDMA, and now Sprint needs to as well. When the entire world uses one standard using anything else hurts you. AT&T’s spent a long time being a favorite with travelers. Although they’re not a huge market share, they’re out there. LTE is going to be the new GSM, and although WiMax has it’s advantages, LTE will win.

2. Become the “anything but iPhone” provider. With AT&T and Verizon both having the iPhone, there’s already people calling Sprint a dead man walking. If Sprint can’t get the iPhone, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to become the niche for people that don’t want an iPhone. Get the latest and greatest Android, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry, and Nokia smartphones, and they have a chance of being what AT&T was before the iPhone existed: Maybe not the best, but definitely had the best selection of phones. Just having the phones isn’t enough, though…

3. Become the nerd’s paradise. With AT&T and Verizon both becoming more and more restrictive on their data plans, Sprint needs to go in the opposite direction if they want to stay afloat. They always promise there won’t be data caps, soft caps, throttling, etc, and that’s good. Next is including tethering for free on smartphones that support it, either USB or wireless. Tethering is a growing demand, and if they can shout from the roof tops that theirs is free and the other guys charge an EXTRA $30 on top of the data plan, they’ll turn enough heads. Grow this out to being more open and friendly to the jailbreaking/rooting/“I want full control of my phone” community, and they’re a bastion for nerds and geeks. We already have seen that where we go is where the public eventually ends up with gadgetry, and grassroots effort can work wonders if done right.

So there’s this game out called Game Dev Story. It’s from a Japanese developer, out for iOS, Android, and PC. The idea of the game is you start out as an up and coming game developer and you pump out games. Hire staff, put out more games, move to bigger offices, put out more games, etc, etc. It’s one of those “this won’t be fun…” games and then all the sudden it’s an hour later and you’re like “GAH! Stupid coder just got a hot streak of bugs! dick!”

My favorite part of the game is naming games. For instance, I made a War Shooter called simply X of Y. Or my series of RPG Dating games, “+1 to Love.” The sequels were +2 to Love, etc. The fact that dating games are real in Japan seriously depresses me.

Anyways, so there’s a point in the game where you can start making sequels to your hit games, and later you can put out your own console(s). So I’m on my second console and I named it “Sell your Soul.” As in, you have to sell your soul to get one because it’s god damned expensive. I’m trying to level up as many game types as I can so I’m on the third installment of my Table Harbor game (no, I have NO earthly idea what the hell kind of game that actually is but apparently it sells SUPER well). So the game’s finished, the little pop up comes up to let me rename the game or just go ahead and publish it. Current Title: Sell Your Soul - On A Boat 3.

THIS is the reason I’m playing this game. It’s cheap, stupid, total time waster, and funny.

I picked it up on 360 because that’ll be the only way to play with the majority of my friends, but quick review of multiplayer:

plays exactly like CoD:MW2 multiplayer. Only real difference I’ve “felt” so far is that it SEEMS like there aren’t any really “true” sniper perches. I definitely haven’t played all the maps yet, but of the ones I have I only found 2 perches I felt comfortable sniping in. It bugs me a lot because MW2’s maps were often played out in the tight spots, submachine guns, spray and pray, which is the opposite of how I like to play. However, in those maps, there were at least 2 sniping perches that let you see a large portion of the map that was moderately well defended. In Black Ops it feels like most of the perches give you a far more narrow point of view of the map. It’s probably that i haven’t had a chance to play enough yet, but who knows.

The only other difference is that in MW2 you leveled up and unlocked access to guns, kill streaks, etc. Now you unlock access to guns, but also have to use credits to buy them. So levels give you access, credits let you actually use it. The thing I like is all the gun attachments and crap are just available to you, you just have to buy them, instead of the whole “get 150 kills with FMJ to unlock this other thing” bullshit.

I haven’t done zombie mode yet, waiting for some of my friends to be online.

edit: oh yeah, single player. I only played for… maybe half an hour, probably less than that. I’m tempted to actually finish it though, the story looks really interesting. The first level is Cuba ‘61, you’re part of the Bay of Pigs strike team. What I did felt awesome, I just wanted to hop in the multiplayer because I know that’s where i’m gonna spend most my time.

Weekend Confirmed’s Garnett Lee agrees with me, Fable 1 is the best of the series. I dunno if we come to the conclusion in the same way, but we agree on that much.

I felt that the change from F1 to F2 was far too big. The combat system was completely reworked. Melee/ranged combat is better with F2’s system, but F1’s magic system was far, far better. F3 adjusted the magic system from F2 to be more enjoyable. Feature wise, I prefer most of F1’s mechanics over F2 or 3 otherwise. I enjoyed F2 a lot, but the HUGE shift in the story bugged me. The idea is that it takes place 200 years later. My problem? it’s far, far more than 200 years later. More like 1500 years later, minimum. F1 is more like a Author/Merlin era story, and F2 is more Robin Hood, maybe even past that. There’s so little to do with the first game.

So, I had an idea. A series of thoughts. To understand this, you have to have played Fable 1, at least. Fable: The Lost Chapters would be better considering the longer story arc. I’ll also be referencing mechanics from the second and third games, so … really, if you haven’t played all of them, you probably won’t get this.

I want a Fable prequel MMO on the console.

The basic story:

In Fable 1 we learn that the Guildmaster took over the Hero’s guild, allowing for heroes to do as they wish. No forced goodness. You’re a “Hero-classed” person, but you can be a hero or a villain. I want the prequel to take place around this time, of the guild being “refreshed.” Maybe the “starting zone” is the actual fight to take over, you’re helping the Guildmaster. Then the Guildmaster goes “kk, we won. Go out in the world, do stuff, help the Guild rebuild a name with the people… or whatever.” Then you’re out, leveling, doing stuff. Evil or Good, your choice.

One of the problems I had with F2 and 3 was that the new environments/maps/zones/levels or whatever you want to call it, at best, have little “nods” to a zone in the previous game. Example: In Fable 2, when you’re running around Wraithmarsh, you run over a bridge… The bridge from Oakvale in the first game. Otherwise, Oakvale doesn’t exist, at all, whatsoever. In Fable 3 Bowerstone has been COMPLETELY reordered, the only thing that looks familiar is the “center” of Bowerstone Market, the clock tower, the bridge, the stupid pig statue thing even got moved to another area. Brightwood’s lake is now Mourningwood, but developed with housing and whatnot.

Obviously, places like Bowerstone will grow/expand over time. That’s fine. The MMO could include “ancient” versions of all of the zones from each of the three games, interweaving them bit by bit so if you’ve played them you can go “OOOHHH, so Darkwood is east of Brightwood…” Part of the problem with each game is certain zones have names VERY similar to previous games, but they’re very different zones. I’d like to see some sort of thing along the lines of “It’s not that these zones changed so much in 50 years, it’s just you weren’t going thru them.” Why am I, as the gamer, stuck trying to figure out “ok… so Bowerstone’s here, but this new zone… where the hell was this in the last game? It looks COMPLETELY different, there wasn’t a lake here…” I understand it’s a new game, you can’t just rehash old maps with new textures because people will be pissed… but it still bugs me.

Mechanics:

Four person parties. A tank, healer, and two damage. Four people so that you can use the d-pad to target your party members to heal or buff.

Use the targeting system for melee/ranged combat of the first game, but for magic use the system from the third game. Bring back gear that effects your stats, not just how handsome/pretty you are. Plate is for tanks, +health stuff. Mail increases ranged attack stats, leather for melee stats, and cloth for “caster” stats.

The magic system from F2, where they merged spells into “don’t target it for AoE, or target it and it hits one guy” was a great idea. I like that a lot. the problem is it’s too hard to change spells on the fly. Bring back Fable 1’s use of a modifier button (pull a trigger, your A B X Y buttons now cast spells instead of … whatever else) for more spells for casters/healers. Add in some more spells that are some kinds of buffs, or change them so they’re in some way specific to filling a roll. Like, ghost swords do crap damage but do loads of threat. Multi-arrow for ranged damage, double swing for melee. Then things like lightning/fire/etc are for caster dps.

I wouldn’t want to see WoW style talent trees in a Fable MMO, but you could get the same effect with something like Global Agenda’s method of talents. I’m thinking for Fable, being x level means you have y number of spells to get. Besides gear, the only thing that “defines” you as a class is the spells you can cast. You can have 4 spells (effectively 8 if you can tinker some for balanced “target a mob for direct damage or no targeting for AoE”), that’s it. So, caster’s and healers wear the same gear, but they’ll use very different spells.

Otherwise, it’s all a matter of blending in standard MMO tropes (read: rip off WoW) and blending in your Fable-ness. You already have zones, you can pretty easily do a sort of “instancing” like WoW does. You have a rich story with lots of background to build off in many different directions. You can do things in a sort of Global Agenda method of “generic bosses at end of dungeon” or you can do a sort of Fable/WoW blend of bandit dungeons, hobb dungeons, balverine dungeons, etc, etc with specific bosses at each end. You can keep the strong Good vs. Evil vibe of all Fables pretty easily. Everyone’s a member of the Guild but the Guild is factioned. Continuing on WoW references, the Guild is your Shattrath/Dalaran type places, and Temple of Skorm/Temple of Avo are your Orgimmar or Stormwind.

Anyways, for me part of why I think Fable 1 is the best of the series is it’s story. It’s not the best gaming story ever, but it was perfect for what it was. It hit every point it was trying to, weaved wonderfully with the game mechanics, and really made for a fun game. I think a Fable MMO, blending together mechanics from each of the three games, could be amazing. I really think that the story would have to a prequel to the first game, though, because 2 and 3 have gone in such a far direction it’ll be leaving the realm of “classic fantasy.”

The credits are rolling right now for Fable 3. I just beat it. I have more than a couple of thoughts I want to spill out, because this ending really struck a defining opinion in me. I’m assuming you already know the premise for Fable 3, and have played at least Fable 2, if not 1 as well.

Changes versus Fable 2

First of all, the extra bit of polish that went onto Fable 2’s engine really helped out. It has the same look of 2, but it feels more put together. There were a couple of “they didn’t fix that?” points, but I noticed less of those then the overall graphical/environment problems I had with 2. The biggest two problems:

1. I could see environment stitching. There were a few times where I noticed the textures for the ground or building had a very noticeable white line between them. It’s obviously a limitation of the engine, because they were in Fable 2, as well, but I noticed it far, far less this go round.

2. More then a couple points of bad hitbox collisions. For those unaware, hitbox collision is where a part of a character, say their leg, interacts with either another character’s hitboxes or the environment. Good hitbox collision is noticed when you NEVER notice it. Bad is when you go “…ok seriously fuck this rock I think I’m stuck on.”

Nothing too drastic, just little problems. When they happened it sucked but they happened rarely enough I didn’t care.

Otherwise the largest changes to Fable 2 was the new interfacing and experience system.

Interactions with NPCs are completely redone, in a far more simple manner. However, with each step along the path of building a relationship with a NPC, you now have to preform quests of some sort. It’s cool for a couple times, but after a while I hate it and don’t care. The old games, you had different outfits and expressions that you could use to make dozens of people fall in love with you all at once, now you actually have to work for each one. I get the idea of that, it makes way more sense then the old system, but in the Fable world I think it’s pointless to pick that as a point of “we gotta be realistic.” I mean, you’re a fucking HERO. If Justin Bieber can get 12 year old girls to flip shit over him, I think a guy that’s trying to save the damned world (for realsies) can do the same.

The new “Sanctuary,” which is literally the new start menu, is pretty neat. At first I thought “ok. this is … cool, I guess.” After about the fifth time in I was thinking “Yeah, I’d of been perfectly happy just having a god damned menu. This walking around to stuff is a little lame.” Towards the end I was used to it and it didn’t bother me. The lack of a mini map, or easily accessed map, made things daunting. Having to go to the Sanctuary, the up to the map to do anything… not fun. Granted, Fable 1 and 2 didn’t have what you could call “accurate renderings of the game world” as maps, but I felt I got more from them than Fable 3’s little 3D Risk map thing. It’s neat, I can see it becoming a popular “main map” format, but I still want a minimap. I know the breadcrumbs kind of make them pointless, but I like having it.

The whole “there’s no more experience” thing is kind of BS. It used to be that as you started the game, quest would grant you 500 experience, and killing things would grant a few XP here and there (or something, I’m making the numbers up to make a point). As you leveled up you earned more. Now, you earn 5 “Guild Seals” and as you get further in the game you earn more. Same shit, new name, new generic valuing. The difference is you have less stuff to spend it on that actually helps you thru the game, and more stuff that in Fable 2 was in books. So, now you just rank up your melee/ranged/magic combat or buy new spells. You also spend (granted, lots less) to upgrade your skills in the jobs to earn money, or to be able to do things like new expressions, dye your clothes, buy/sell buildings, etc. Easier, yeah. Better? Arguably. I say arguably because you earn GS’s by completing quests, killing stuff (much, much slower rate than it should be I think), and ranking up relationships with NPCs. The problem is, which you’ll hear me complain about later, is … there’s not enough things to earn GS’s.

I do like how a few of the spells are now in the form of potions. That was a big complaint of mine in Fable 2. In 1, I’d be blast off two or three spells at a time that were timed spells, meaning I use them, they last for x amount of time, then they’re over. My goal for every fight was “blow Slow Time first, ghost swords if they’re not up already, and fireball or enflame when I need it.” In 2, that still worked, but you had to program your spell casting set in order so that you could “stack” the spells, which never really worked. I ended up giving up on Slow Time in 2 because it wasted more time trying to stack it with other spells. Now, in Fable 3, a couple of the spells are potions, so they “function” like they did it 1. Also, you put on gloves to use your spells, and you can pair them together to make a Fire Vortex or Shock Swords (my two favorite combos, btw). Neat fix, I DEFINITELY used magic more in 3 then I ever did in 2 because of it. I still like Fable 1’s magic system best, because as you leveled up you reached a point where it was super overpowered. I understand why they turned that off, but that was why I liked it. You were so OP nothing ever stood a chance.

Gameplay

I don’t want to spoil anything (or as little as possible, at least), so I’m going to talk about the generics of game play. I won’t talk about the story in detail.

The opening is kind of typical, I enjoyed the nearly immediate “shit hits the fan!” moment. I really don’t think ANYTHING I did in Fable 2 effected the Fable 3 world. From what I could tell, at least. I have 3 or 4 heroes saved in Fable 2, and if it DID use one of those saves, it obviously just picked the first one. At least, I didn’t see anything that let me choose one, and the previous king in 3 was obviously a good guy, which is my main game save in Fable 2.

Anyways, I’ve only played thru the game once so far, and I’m not sure what happens when you do evil. In the beginning it REALLY felt like it was leaning more in the direction of the first game. In the first, so many of the quests ended with you earning lots of positive moral points. While building your revolution against the King, the same is happening. Once you ARE king, that’s when you realize that whole idea of being good is kind of meaningless in the beginning. You’re HIGHLY encouraged to turn to the extreme evil side. What pisses me off is, from what I can tell, there’s no middle line anymore. Fable 2 had a great middle road you could always choose in almost every case. The little side quests, crap that doesn’t matter, you had either good or evil chooses. The BIG things though, you could pick a middle road that was neither evil or good. The effect was if you did all good otherwise, you were still all good, and vis versa. When I realized what was happening, I gave up on trying to actually getting shit done but still being good and just went full on good, hoping it would end with some sort of “OHAI SUPER AWESOME NICE GUY, HERE’S SOMETHING THAT’LL TOTALLY SAVE THE DAY!” Guess what never happened? Yeah. There are a few points where there’s a “neutral” choice, but I never picked it because it does NOTHING to help the situation. It probably would help if I were playing evil to not be SUPER evil, but what’s the point then?

So anyways, I think I avoided spoiling, and I’m just gonna bitch about two things now.

1. Total game time played was around 10 hours. Maybe 15, I dunno for sure. The big hitch for Fable 3 is the whole “revolt against the king, then PLAY as the king! LE GASP! SUCH AN ORIGINAL IDEA!” (it is, I guess, an original idea, I’m just not sure it was a good one) The problem I have is that in Fable: The Lost Chapters, even having played it now 5 times or more, I can do nearly the same “completion” rate in … maybe 20 hours, best. Takes longer. The big difference is I’ll complete the game with EVERY spell and piece of gear maxed about 6-10 hours into game play time. That’s mostly because I know the game in and out that well now, but it’s also because there’s FUCKING SHIT TO DO. If I IGNORED entire sections of Fable:TLC I could finish it in 15-ish hours. Fable 3, although there ARE side quests, there’s SO FEW I could hardly max out anything before the end of the game. The whole revolt then king thing? Being the king is about a quarter of the game. I did all of that today in 2 hours, maybe 3. The worst part is WHILE you’re king you sit there and just say yay or nay to something. Of the 4 (was it 5? I’m sticking with 4) game time days that you’re king, you don’t even get to go do shit between them. Your little butler asshole has a day “scheduled,” and once you do the last one you go onto the next schedule. I GUESS I was supposed to ignore the schedule and just go do whatever the fuck I wanted, because it’s an RPG and you know there’s no actual time schedule to keep. Comparing it to Fable 2 is even worse. I think my total played time in fable 2, ignoring expansions, was like 20-25, maybe 30 hours. I’m pretty sure Fable 2 is twice as long as Fable 3, and I’m not counting DLC because 3 doesn’t have any DLC yet. Now, MAYBE I just happened to skip WAY more shit then I was supposed to, although I really tried to only skip things I felt would end in earning me evil moral points. This shit was way too short. I’m SERIOUSLY hoping that playing evil makes for a completely different playing experience, because that’s the only way I can rationally justify such a short game.

2. Did people complain about Fable 2 being too big of a game world or something? Fable 3 is fucking TINY. I know I harped on it a little bit, but there isn’t a GOD DAMNED thing to do in this game, and I can’t help but feel it’s because there’s so few zones that HAVE shit to do. It’s the kind of barren waste land of a map that makes me afraid that Lionhead is planning to just do a shit load of DLC. The problem is that DLC is gonna have to be cheap as hell, if not free, to make me want to pick up Fable 3 again (after I play evil once). They can’t have DLC add to the main story of the game, because that’s dumb (forcing me to replay the game in full just to see it? Yeah right). They’ll have to have a bunch of “tack on” DLC, like Fallout 3 did. DLC that’s completely unrelated to the actual story of the game. The problem with THAT is, unless playing on evil is seriously different, I’m not encouraged by the base game to download expansions. Same problem I had with Fallout 3. I beat it, didn’t like it, so I didn’t touch any DLC.

The following paragraph contains spoilers

What pisses me off about Fable 3 is that, RIGHT up until the point you become king, the game is fucking AWESOME. I was really enjoying myself. Each of the zones you’re in feels really well put together and fleshed out, the characters are well written and there’s AMAZING voice acting. The story feels EPIC, namely when you first land in Aurora. There’s some real greatest there. Everything goes downhill once you’re king though. The pace of what you ARE doing as king is slow and boring, then the artificial pace they put on the world is far, far too fast. You’re king for 4 playable days, but a year passes in that time. When I realized how much time passed so quickly, I thought about how I saw almost the entire game world I could access, and how little there was. I felt like while being king I should of been out in the world, expanding the kingdom’s borders, fighting off bandits from far off settlements, etc, etc. Once you’re at the point where you’re like “OK, well, that kind of sucked but at least this is what the game’s been building up to! Should be epic!” you’re let down. The final fight? I used UNMAXED magic spells to kill the final boss. Just 4 or 5 casts. Not even maxed out, I repeat. The race up to the final boss? Just an annoyance, at best. The whole thing was 100% anticlimactic. Then? The game’s just over. You sit there, you’re surrounded by the NPC’s all patting you on the back for being such a great dude, reminded that although you tried to be a nice guy the kingdom still got shit on BECAUSE you were a nice guy. Then the credits roll. After credits a window pops up that basically says “So like, you were a good dude and all, but because you were a nice guy nearly the entire kingdom is dead. Everyone left? They don’t like you, and you’re gonna be remembered as a shithead king.” Now, while I finished typing this, my guy’s hanging out in the Sanctuary.

END SPOILERS

I seriously was in love with Fable 3, right up until being king. That whole thing made the game shitty. I HOPE that playing thru again on evil will change my mind. Maybe playing good is a completely different game than playing evil thru out. I doubt it, but it’d be nicer. I also hope that the first couple DLCs are cheap enough that I’ll consider buying them just to see it, maybe they’ll fix something…

this week’s Weekend Confirmed included some discussion about how Microsoft “fixed” a part of Kinect before launch. Kinect was going to require standing, although this fix allows the system to actually recognize sitting properly. Launch titles won’t be able to use it, because they had to develop without it, but later titles will. So, the idea that the next Kinect Adventures would have a bunch of sitting things, like paddling in a boat, etc. Cannata, kind of in passing, throws out the idea of “Sit and Spin!” Those things you sit in, “spin” the little disc in the center, and you start spinning. Puke chairs, kind of.

So here’s my idea. What if BEFORE this Sit and Spin, Microsoft adds 3D to the 360 (3D-60?). So, you’ll be able to VIRTUALLY ride a Sit and Spin, IN THREE FREAKING DEE. The game will be simple steps:

I’m watching This Week in Tech, and they’re talking about Facebook, and the whole “Facebook is willing to push the envelope of what their users want” thing.

A thought struck me.

Remember in SimCity you would raise the taxes to something stupid high, the citizens would complain, then you’d drop it by 1% and they’d be instantly happy again? Once you did it once you did it again on purpose after that?

Facebook users are the citizens. Facebook is the evil 12 year old, now cackling.

It took a little while but I’ve kind of come to terms with what I liked about the older versions of digg, and what I don’t like about reddit.

On the old digg, if I had an account, I could say “don’t show me stories from this category” or “only show these categories.” Although at times I went into the upcoming streams, or into the comments, mostly I used digg for simply seeing a stream of news from around the internet. My list of categories to watch was nearly all of them. The front page algorithm “seemed” to be that once something was up for “promotion” it hit the stream, and although the diggs could keep rising or falling it’s place was mostly “cemented” on the front page, in front of stories that came thru the algorithm before it and behind stories that came after it. Sure, if it got enough buries it would fall off the front page, but that didn’t happen a whole lot. This is what I wanted from digg. A stream of news picked up by a larger community. I could read a headline and ignore it if I knew I didn’t care, or read thru the description/look at the thumbnail if it seemed interesting, then go thru farther if it piqued my interest.

Digg v4’s new “My News” system, although seemingly innovative, breaks the concept completely. It SOUNDS like a great idea, and for the first few days of beta I was really into it. Then I started noticing problems. It became a parser of sites. All their articles were thrown up on My News in the order digg found them. I was better off going to each individual site because then I could at least filter out these new fake digg advertisements much easier.

The Top News, which replaces the old front page, doesn’t feel right, either. It feels far, far more limited. I feel like I see a much more constrained version of the front page, there isn’t as much “random crap.” That sounds good, but really in my opinion it isn’t. The old random crap was “Top 10 reasons why you should totally get high and go watch Iron Man 2” and shit like that. Things I knew I could blow off from reading 3 words. Now, the new Top News is “all good content.” Again, that sounds good, but I don’t like it. Although I didn’t read half of what I saw on the front page, I liked seeing it there because I knew that it had “earned” it’s place on the front page. People dugg it up, so it was put on there. Now, it’s just a stream of entries from blogs I rarely – if ever – read, and about stuff I rarely – if ever – care about. This probably why so many people are complaining about “digg selling out.” I don’t think digg sold out, I think they worked out an algorithm so that the “everyone sees this” content is more mature, grown up. This is probably a good business move, but I don’t care for it.

I tried “replacing” digg with reddit, but it doesn’t fit my needs either. I like reddit’s system of subreddits, categories for specific news. I can make sure the pot group isn’t in my list and I’m moderately certain I won’t see random pothead crap. I add atheism to my list and sure enough, I see more atheism things. The problem is the front page itself feels like it’s taking all my subs, and haphazardly placing together a list. I’ll hit the front page, see something is listed as the second story. Later it’ll be fifth. Come back again it’s back up to the second. There isn’t one, consistent “this is ever last god damned thing that’s earned to the right to be on the front page” list that users than cherry pick what they do or don’t see from. Reddit’s “front page” doesn’t update nearly as often, it feels like, either. I got now at 11:45pm and see stuff in the same place it was at around 2pm today. It makes it feel far less “up to date.” I keep finding myself going to the individual subreddits, where the listing is far more logical, hoping to see something new. Although this isn’t ideal, I can understand the appeal. It’s more concise this way. The problem is reddit’s so ugly and poorly designed (navigation specifically), if I want to follow a large number of subreddits, I have to either click thru to the listing of subreddits and then open each of them individually, or make a firefox bookmarks folder with all of them so I can click the “open all in new tabs” thing. Either way it’s kind of ridiculous having to do that. The top bar that lists all of them is nice for someone who follows a short list of sub’s, but once there are more than my browser’s window sizes allows I have to thru extra steps to see them all.

It’s also obvious reddit’s far more involved in the discussion surrounding the news than the news itself. I’m not against this, I support the idea, I just don’t care to get in the discussion. On digg I commented sometimes, making random little comments I thought where funny, but I never paid attention to what random people have to say. That doesn’t mean that these discussions are invalid to me, it’s just I’m more concerned with the news itself, and seeing it in an orderly and timely fashion. If I want to talk about things then I talk about them with people I know.

Although I can dig what reddit is doing (pun moderately intended), and now that I’ve actually played with it more seriously, I at least am not adverse to using it. However, it doesn’t fill the void that digg v4 leaves behind with it’s new layout and design decisions. I don’t think there’s any other serious contenders, and I’m too lazy to go out and actually follow all of these sites myself.

Anyways, I give it a couple months until some other internet asshole that actually feels motivated crops up with something much like the older digg, and another year before it’s popular enough that it’s up/down voting system is reliable…

I’ve taken my Evo 4G into repair shops twice now for the same problem. The problem is that it’ll randomly start “tapping” the upper left corner, even if my hand is on the back of the phone and no where near the screen. They keep trying to call it a simple “software problem.” Even after resets and whatnot, and even with the rep’s seeing exactly what I’m talking about, they call it software. Then they run tests, can’t “see anything wrong” and hand me back my phone and shoo me off.

I understand why, they don’t have Evo’s in stock to do a hardware swap, but it’s a joke. They just don’t want to say it’s a hardware problem because they can’t figure it/swap it. Even when I say “So like, you see what’s going on right? You see how it has nothing to do with software because it’s … obviously… not software? If you had the Evo in stock you’d just swap it, or repair it if you had parts in, right?” No words spoken, but I get a shrugging nod.

I get it, it’s a popular phone, but at least stop giving me the run around. Start setting up a list for people to sign up for to swap phones or something. This is archaic.

I’ve almost run out of my first batch of game time in APB that you get for buying the game, and I’ve spent enough time on both Enforcers and Crims side to make some judgments I think.

To understand some of my points, you have to understand APB’s manner of rating a player. There’s your actual rank, which is increased by literally doing ANYTHING in the game. You can never enter an Action District and reach level 50 rank just by maxing out your Fashionista and Tuner achievements. The higher your rank the more things you have access to, like weapons, upgrades, etc. The Threat Rating is kind of new to me in an MMO. It’s more like actual MMO levels I think, however it CAN decrease. It’s like the “RealSkill” matchmaking system many XBox Live games use now, I guess. There is also the Star Ranks, which for Enforcers is called Prestige and for Crims Notoriety. This ranking is a “by play session” rank. You start out low (2.5 for Enforcers, 0 for Crims), and doing actions either increases or decreases this star rating. When you reach 5 stars a bounty is on you. For an Enforcer that means you can kill every Criminal, but they can all also kill you. For a Crim EVERYONE can kill you, and you can kill everyone. Crims star rating increases at a faster rate, which is why they start lower, but also decreases over time if they’re not committing crimes. Enforcers decreases for doing bad things (running people over, crashing into road signs, etc), but increases for pretty much anything “good.” Higher the rank, the higher your rewards.

Matchmaking is OFFENSIVELY broken. The match making system is either taking too much into consideration or not nearly enough. I feel like I’m constantly being put against groups that are far superior to me, either in gear, in skill, or both. The problem I THINK is that since it sees that my character rises in threat/star rating quickly, that I’m a skilled player (arguable mechanic there). What it’ll do in response to this is put me against opponents of a higher rank. The problem is if I’m low enough rank I don’t have access to certain guns or upgrades, let alone would I be able to afford them, but my opponents might, and usually do, have these things. The game is effectively attempting to say “you’re good enough to fight these guys with better shit.” The problem is, you do two missions like that and all the sudden you’re shithoused right back down a peg because the guns and upgrades instantly make your opponent overpowered compared. Sure, I’ve killed the people with better stuff, but it’s far rarer then getting railroaded.

Looking For Group isn’t remotely intelligent. The actual mechanic of the LFG interface placing you in a group is a failure. Of the 50 hours I’ve spent in the game so far (including pre-release time), I’ve spent about 5-10 of those hours playing on a team with 1-2 people of my skill level or better. The vast majority of others are far under my level. It also fails to take into consideration the AFKers who leave themselves in LFG (which stack the numbers of your group) but aren’t active, there in placing you against groups of higher numbers/skill. I’ve noticed a lot of the time this last week that if there’s an AFK player making us a 3 person team we only are fighting 2 people, but I think that’s more to do with “Call for Backups” not working right either. If I’m in a group with two other people, that are of equal rank/skill, but my rank/skill is rated at twice theirs, I’m an outlier that is effectively placing us against higher ranked teams. If they’re both bad players, I’m carrying the team and losing further progression in rank/rating because they’re keeping/slowing me down. In the same effect, I know I’ve held back other people I was grouped with far better than me.

Matchmaking fail + LFG fail = RAGEQUIT. If I’m in a bad group against a good group, I’m gonna rage quit. Plan and simple. I hate dealing with the frustration of slamming my head against a wall. Far too often I’ve been in a randomized group against a clan group, and it just pisses me the fuck off. Every MMO that has PvP, after a certain amount of time, has to admit that PUG’s can’t fight clan/guild groups. Many clan groups in games like this play more than just one game together, so they’ve spent a lot of time together learning each others moves and habits, and have developed a lingo between themselves. Even if the match is 4v4, and the PUG is all good players of equal skill, the clan group will win the vast majority of the time due to how well meshed they should be. I say should because I’m sure there’s just as many clans of “WANNA JOIN MY GUILD?!” people…

Poorly planned out missions make for a failure. There are more than a few missions that are simply poorly laid out. Too often it’s excessively easy to camp a point, or too easy to body camp. There are a number of buildings and clusters that create excessively difficult defensive or attack maneuvers for small teams. I’ve been in a few large matches (8v8) and these kinds of problems evaporated quickly because of the sheer number of angles you can take at once, but in smaller matches like 4v4, 3v3, 2v2, many of the places where mission objectives are in have limited entry points or odd angles for sniper perches where it really is just a matter of which side gets to the point first. This is acceptable in SOME situations, but over half the missions I’m in feel like the objectives are an uphill battle. I don’t just mean for me, I’ve been on the side that can just ROFLPWNT a ladder to fuck the other team up and I’m easily aware of how imbalanced it is.

The Unreal Engine, no matter how pretty it is, was a HORRIBLE choice. Unreal Engine games are beautiful, no argument. This was still a horrible, horrible decision. I have a Core 2 Quad Q8400, 8GB’s of DDR2-800, the fastest harddrive available before 10,000RPM drives and SSD’s, and a GTS 250. My system is pretty beast for an Unreal game. However, APB still runs like SHIT. Why? It’s an MMO with DISGUSTINGLY HUGE ENVIRONMENTS. There’s just TOO MUCH SHIT going on on screen. I have to set it at the lowest settings just to hold 24-35FPS, and if I find a nice little spot where there’s 5 matches all fighting at once in the same place, you better believe that shit drops to 10FPS or lower. It’s very pretty, even with the settings so low, but it’s not worth the shitty framerates. On more than a few occasions while driving I’ll run into something simply because it hadn’t drawn in game yet because Unreal Engine’s loading mechanic is poor.

Even after all that shit, I still LIKE the game, it’s just not worth picking up yet unless you’re a SERIOUS fan of the game type. When I do find a group that I mesh well with, and we’re up against opponents of our gear/skill level so it’s challenging, but not in a baby-punching way, the game is SO much fun. Problem is I spend FAR more time being angry at the little problems then I do having fun now.

For those unaware of the technology, Intel Wireless Display, AKA WiDi, is a new feature in many new laptops this summer. With a device that hooks up to your TV, you can wirelessly transmit what’s on your laptop’s display to the television.

At work, Best Buy, we’re using a Toshiba computer and HDTV, and the NetGear Push2TV as our display for WiDi.

Here’s an example situation: I have the WiFi on, so I’m connected to our wifi network and browsing the internet. The MyWiFi program (which is what actually controls the feature in Windows) is running but not yet connected to the NetGear. When I have MyWiFi start to connect to the NetGear, my connection to the wifi network drops and the TV will sync, now displaying what’s on the laptop’s screen, however it no longer is connected to the internet because the WiFi is now turned off. If I then try to reconnect to the WiFi to get online, the WiDi connection drops.

Literally: if WiDi is on, WiFi is off. If WiFi is on, WiDi is off. My coworkers and I are now under the assumption that’s just how the technology works, which is pretty lame. Are we wrong, @garryweil? Is this some sort of error?

I was really excited for Crackdown 2, but I’m already burned out on it. The largest complaint most people have is “it’s the first game, all over.” That doesn’t bother me. What does bother me at about it, at this point (little under 2/3’s done) is that it’s the same game, they just broke the environment. It’s still fun, I like it, just wasn’t worth the price of a full retail game. Should of been half priced.

I’m still playing and having fun with APB, but the problem at this point is that 90% of the people I get grouped with for missions are either complete shit, or they just stand there, AFKing in the game, and the LFG engine will just put them back in your group because there’s so few randomized groups going on at any one moment. It’s still a fun game, just not worth playing anymore because most the people I play with suck.

WoW servers are currently down while patch 3.3.5 is being applied, and I suddenly had a thought for an “improvement” to the launcher.

Currently, to find out server status, there’s only a couple methods. You can either go to the status website (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/realmstatus/), or keep trying to log in over and over. My thought is simply a little ticker, as in the scrolling thing on the bottom of CNN for stocks for instance, that lists server names in red for down, green for up. WoW now has far too many servers to do this with easily, however.

Now, some MMO’s now have you login thru the launcher, where as WoW loads the game and then the user logs in. Since the user can’t login thru the launcher, there’s no “easy” way for the launcher to know what server the user has characters on. So why not just an option to list which servers I’d like to see?

John Noonan (http://twitter.com/JohnNoonan) started throwing out early release codes for the Crackdown 2 demo, and as a HUGE fan of the first Crackdown I jumped on it. To put it in perspective, I preordered APB, a “GTA style MMO” solely because it’s made by the guys that made the first Crackdown.

So I downloaded and played the demo. Let me say this off the bat:

If your game is an open world game, that can even remotely be described as “explorable,” a demo that has a time limit is OFFENSIVE. That shit pisses me off. I completely understand the IDEA behind it. You don’t want players spending TOO much time in the world, a demo is only supposed to be a taste. However, if that is the situation, limit the AREA I can explore. Limiting my time in a game demo only serves to piss me off because I’m the type of gamer that, when presented with a “go anywhere the fuck you want” environment, I’m gonna spend at least a little while going all over the place, which means I’m killing time I should use to actually “do” what you want me to in the demo.

THAT BEING SAID, I’m digging what I see so far. The controls feel VERY familiar to the first game, although slightly changed. The UI/graphics are similar enough that it feels like a true “extension” of the first game.

Part of what made the first Crackdown so great was it feels far more “sandbox”-y than most sandbox style games. There’s very little story, just enough to explain “this is why these guys shoot at you.” This one feels like it’s doing a bit more involved story, but it’s not a drastic switch. I feel like I’ll still be able to just run around shooting things.

One of my favorite moments from the first game, I turned down the volume because I was on the phone, and all the sudden the game “locked up.” It turned out it wasn’t a lock up but the game was going to a cut scene because I killed a boss. By accident. I tuned out the audio enough to not hear the little queue’s that I was in a boss area and I just destroyed it. It sounds like that would mean the game is too easy, or that it’s too random, but really it was AWESOME. I loved the first game because I CONSTANTLY felt like a god walking amongst mean, dishing out bullets to foreheads where I saw fit. The challenge was rarely the individual bad guys, it was the sheer number of bullets that flew at me while I jumped from roof top to roof top raining down a firey death with my homing missiles. I really feel like this game is going to have that same feel.

All I got thru in the demo was clearing the first “tactical position” and clearing out the first Freak nest, and it’s definitely early enough that I’m not powerful, but I feel the potential even this early in the game.

Like I said, I HATE time limited demos, but this hit every button it needed to in order to ensure I pre-order the game. I’m very, very excited.

It’s really nice having a system monitor (gkrellm) that doesn’t crash every hour. Gkrellm for Windows is garbage.

Apparently running games in WINE has taken a couple of steps backwards. WoW runs worse than I remember, and there’s already been a couple of “so that used to work just fine…but now it’s completely fail,” moments.

Finding a desktop twitter client that does exactly what I want is damn near impossible, no matter what OS I’m using.

Whoever decided to take the maximize, minimize, and close buttons from the right hand side of the window and move it to the left can go find a sword to fall on. I get that that’s Mac OS thing, but it’s god damned retarded. If you like that I can tell you exactly why: you didn’t get hugged enough as a child and now you express it by doing things differently from others SIMPLY FOR THE SAKE OF DIFFERENCE.

It really is just like riding a bike. You may go slow at first, but it all comes back to you a lot faster than you’d think.

I really like being back in Linux again but there are a couple of “slight” problems that are bugging the shit out of me. Gonna be tough weighing the pro’s/con’s.

So today as I’m coming back from lunch an older couple stopped me to ask a question or two about printers. After we land on what they wanted, the husband says, “So we need one each.” I look at them both and say “… so… two?” He stairs down his glasses at me saying, “You were never in the military, son?”

You have no idea how tempted I was to say “Oh no, sir. See, I’m 24, and there hasn’t been a draft for any unbelievably moronic wars, so I never had a chance to learn military lingo that makes you sound mentally retarded to the rest of world.” One each? If there’s two of you, one each makes it sound like EACH OF YOU NEED ONE. That or he meant Ichi, as in the the Japanese word for one (which is often pronounced as simply ‘ich’), but that’s just as moronic because he just said one twice in a row. I didn’t know you could stutter in two different languages at once.

It’s not my fault that you talk in a manner only a select group of people can/will understand. So yeah, old people suck. Just an FYI.

So today at work we had an early meeting. While waiting on others to get there I updated a few of the jailbroken apps on my phone and restarted it. It never came back on. I had to spend my lunch in the Apple store getting it restored instead of eating. I’m taking it as a sign from On High to go ahead and switch my phones. I’m seriously debating between the HTC Droid Incredible on Verizon or waiting on the HTC Evo 4G on Sprint at this point. Not sure if there are any others I should possibly be waiting for either…